Encounter
is a radio program that may be heard on Sundays at 7.10am (repeated
Wednesday at 7.10pm) on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's
Radio National network.

This highly acclaimed series, co-ordinated by Florence
Spurling, explores the connections between religion and life.

With an emphasis on a high standard of creative
production, Encounter invites the listener to make connections intellectually,
emotionally and intuitively across a broad spectrum of topics.

The program regularly reflects on the religious
experience of multicultural Australia. This includes small, lesser-known
groups and gives access to voices and experiences that are not often
heard in the mainstream media.

New priests have been installed in the parish, and neither the
priests, the congregation nor the local Aboriginal community are
happy.

Michael Gravener: That place is so symbolic, and has such
memories for
people, that they mightn’t pray there, they mightn’t worship a
Christian God
there, but from an Aboriginal point of view – as we all know –
space and place
is very important.

Hilary Bone: It’s a place where many Aboriginal people
have been buried –
and the deaths go on and on and on – it is a sacred place, and
it’s being
defiled.

Paul Collins: It’s understandable that tension will be
there; it’s very
very difficult to move into a community that’s very well established,
that has a
long track record of social justice. But when you move in people
who seem to
want to impose their own model of the church, and their own way
of operating
upon the community, then you begin to realise that the tensions
there will not
only be simmering – they’ll be exploding.

STREET SOUNDS

David Rutledge: Welcome to Encounter. David Rutledge here,
taking you this week to the inner-city suburb of Redfern in Sydney.
Redfern is known for its large Aboriginal population, and over
the past few months, it’s been making the usual national headlines
about a community beset on all sides with the worst kind of chronic
social problems: drug abuse, alcoholism, serial unemployment,
and trouble with the police – the kinds of tensions that led to
the riot earlier this year in February.

But Redfern is also home to a large Aboriginal Catholic community,
and the centre of that community is here: St Vincent de Paul Catholic
Church in Redfern Street. The whole area is bound up in Catholic
Church and local Aboriginal history – right next door to the church
is the Aboriginal Medical Centre, which stands on land that was
handed over to the Aboriginal community by the Sisters of Mercy
some twenty years ago.

The Aboriginal community doesn’t own the church – at least not
under the state freehold system of ownership. But for the past
thirty-five years, St Vincent’s has been a refuge and a home to
hundreds of Aboriginal people who have lived – and sometimes died
– within its walls.

Until recently, the church and the community had experienced three
decades of service from one extraordinary parish priest: Father
Ted Kennedy, who throughout his life has been a passionate advocate
for social justice – and a very sharp thorn in the side of the
Catholic Church hierarchy.

Ted Kennedy: Within the Catholic community in Australia
there has been a
deep, dark hole for a long time now, which amounts to a lack of
genuine
spirituality. By 'spiritual' I do not mean something ethereal,
incapable of
being translated into the common coinage of human experience.
I mean the
opposite: something that can live at the very centre of the human
dilemma.

Religion can become the possession of an elitist group, whose
power reinforces
the power of all the other institutional forces in society. Its
language then
becomes spiritually hollow, incapable of criticising or challenging
any of those
forces. In so becoming, religion moves inevitably away from where
people –
especially the poor – live, move and have their being.

I want to confess that the Australian Catholic Church has built
up a momentum
that it heading away from the poor, and to the extent that it
has done so, it
has become unfaithful to the Gospel.

David Rutledge: Father Ted Kennedy speaking on ABC Radio’s
Saturday Guest program in 1984.

Ted Kennedy was priest at St Vincent’s Church for thirty years;
he came to Redfern in 1971, inspired by the reformist spirit of
the Second Vatican Council. In his ministry to the poor and the
marginalised of Redfern – particularly to the Aboriginal community
– Father Ted extended unconditional support and welcome. The church
and the nearby presbytery were a refuge – and sometimes a home
– for anyone with nowhere else to stay, and it didn’t matter whether
they were black or white, Catholic or otherwise.

Ted Kennedy was also an outspoken critic of the institutional
Church. In 2000 he published a book entitled Who Is Worthy,
which is a searing attack on conservatism and clericalism.

Father Ted today is physically in decline – a series of strokes
has left him bedridden and very ill. But the community at St Vincent’s
Church is continuing the work that he started.

MUSIC - CONVERSATION - INSIDE THE CHURCH

Every Tuesday and Friday morning, the church puts on a meal for
whoever wants to come along. There are three or four dozen people
here this morning, inside and outside the church. It’s a real
community event. And if you come along, you find that Ted Kennedy
– even though he’s physically absent – is still very much a part
of the community.

Glen Jameson: He’s done a lot for the community, especially
when funerals
and christenings – he probably christened half of all the Aboriginal
people in
Redfern – marriages, everything.

Bea Haines: He did lots of things like talk to everyone,
found out what
their circumstances were – like, if they needed help or anything
– he was really
caring and good with everyone.

Glen Jameson: She’s been here all her life; I’ve been coming
here going
on fifteen years now. I’ve met a lot of people, very good people
here that help
us out from time to time, and this church means a lot to the Redfern
people, I’d
say. Not many people have got money to go and get themselves a
feed, so this is
not just for the people that come to the church, this is for people
in the are
who are homeless. To lose this church to anything – be it mother
nature or
anything else – it’d really hurt the community, I reckon.

David Rutledge: That’s Glen Jameson and Bea Haines. People
have come here to Redfern from all over NSW. Tony Haines is Bea’s
brother, he’s from Moree; and Freddy Reynolds is originally from
Brewarrina.

Tony Haines: I’ve got five children and they’ve just about
all been
christened by Father Ted. He was an Irish guy, and the Irish people
had similar
beliefs to us.

David Rutledge: What do you mean, the Irish people had
similar beliefs to
you?

Tony Haines: Well, you know, they struggled in this country
like we did –
you know, with the Eureka Stockade – they were here in the colonies.
That’s part
of the reason why I reckon Ted identified with us: he believed
that the
Aboriginal people are disadvantaged, and he tried to help us.
He’s had three
strokes – and he’s still going.

Freddy Reynolds: I was born at Brewarrina, but I was taken
away in the
stolen generation era. Father Ted’s been a big part of my life
– and not just
only mine, other people here. He’s just like a father, you know,
a big brother
and all that, all put together. I can’t say much more than that
– he’s a
gentleman.

Tony Haines: These black people here are from all over
Australia, not
just from here. And old Ted was able to pick out what groups fitted
in where.
Like when I came to his 25th anniversary out in the yard there,
he had alcohol
out there, all different kinds, where he knew that people went
in their crowds,
and what they drank and what drew them together.

Cindy French: Father Ted, well, he was there when my mother
had me, so
he’s known my family for years and years, ever since I was a baby.
He’s a
beautiful man – like, if we know Father Ted’s coming here, you’d
be lucky to fit
everyone in this church, it’d be from here down to the lights
away, you know? We
love him, and I pray for him all the time.

David Rutledge: Cindy French.

Ted Kennedy’s ministry has extended far beyond the walls of St
Vincent’s Church. The congregation has a large number of members
who live outside Redfern – indeed outside Sydney – and this is
an appropriate complement to Father Ted’s decentralised approach
to priestly office.

Rhonda Ansiewicz and Hilary Bone live in Byron Bay on the north
coast of NSW. Their association with Ted Kennedy and the Redfern
community goes back thirty five years, and once a month they still
come down to St Vincent’s. Here’s Rhonda.

Rhonda Ansiewicz: The guidance Ted gave was in that he
would defer us –
and himself – to the Aboriginal people. If you wanted to work
out something, or
something was amiss, he’d say 'ask Mum Shirl,' or 'go and ask
Aunty Gladdie.'
And it kind of threw us all into this chaotic, unknown space,
where you had to
work through it yourself, you know, Ted wasn’t there to help.
Like he’d offer
you the space, and you could take it, but he wasn’t there holding
your hand. And
then relationships developed out of that.

It drew you into that vortex of suffering, of celebration, of
struggle, of
social justice. And that, for me, encapsulates a lot about Redfern.

Hilary Bone: There was this total absence of hierarchy.
So when you
walked into the church – Ted’s church, as it was and always will
be, I guess –
you felt at home. And I think the irony now is that we have this
hierarchical
church imposing power from the top down to the bottom. And with
Ted’s church, it
was empowerment, rather than being subject to the imposition of
power.

David Rutledge: That’s a very interesting point you make
there. Because a
lot of the time, when people talk about Ted, they’ll describe
him as a leader, a
charismatic figure, and you kind of get this image of a high priestly
figure,
leading his congregation – through the wilderness, or wherever.
You’re saying it
wasn’t like that, that hierarchy wasn’t there?

Hilary Bone: No, that was the irony of the whole thing:
that there was
this leadership, but the leadership wasn’t structured, it was
there because of
the respect that people held for Ted. So that it was only in his
absence that we
began to see him as a leader, in that he was an inspirational
figure. So that
perhaps 'inspirational' is a better word than 'leader'.

David Rutledge: Hilary Bone.

It could be said that one of the most remarkable things about
Ted Kennedy has been that he managed to perform his remarkable
ministry within the hierarchical structure of the church. Joe
Castley is another long-standing member of the community.

Joe Castley: The great thing about Ted was that he knew
when not to
fight, when just to go his own way. And he had the status, and
he had the brain,
and he had the authority to be able to do that. So he existed
as a sort of
parallel church in Sydney for years and years and years.

David Rutledge: How was Ted able to plough his own furrow
in that way? I imagine he would have faced resistance or direct
opposition from the hierarchy, in simply performing the kind of
ministry that he wanted to perform.

Joe Castley: Not only from the hierarchy, but from his
fellow priests. He
told me once – fairly recently – what awful loneliness it had
been, that he felt
cut off in his pursuit of the mission to the marginalised and
to the poor, to
the free spirit within the Church. He felt terribly alone, and
it was
appallingly difficult.

CONVERSATION -INSIDE THE CHURCH

Kel: My name’s Kel. This may not be like the Sacred Heart
Mission down in
Melbourne – but it’s still a good feed; everyone’s welcome, come
as you are.
They do a wonderful job here in Redfern. You might think Redfern’s
a bit of a
poor area, but people in Redfern survive.

David Rutledge: If you come along to the Tuesday and Friday
meal at St Vincent’s Church, you’ll find great community spirit
– but also, at the moment, a lot of anger. In July last year,
a new priest took over at the church: Father Gerry Prindiville,
and a few months later he was joined by his assistant, Father
Dennis Sudla.

Father Gerry and Father Dennis are followers of the Neocatechumenal
Way, a highly conservative formation within the Catholic Church.
We’ll hear more about the Neocatechumenate later in the program,
but suffice it to say that St Vincent’s is now experiencing a
style of priesthood that’s very different from the Father Ted
Kennedy model.

The new priests have taken a stand on the issue of respect for
the church and its proper use. Appropriate decoration has become
a contentious issue. There’s been carpet put down in places over
the bare floorboards, and there have been wrangles over what should
go up on the walls. Behind the altar here, there’s a photo of
Shirley Smith or Mum Shirl, who died in 1998, and she’s revered
among the Aboriginal and the white congregation as a genuine saint
(if not an officially canonised one). Among other things, Mum
Shirl was instrumental in setting up the Aboriginal Medical Centre
next door. The new priests feel that the photo of Mum Shirl is
inappropriate, and the community has had a fight on its hands
to keep it up on the wall.

On the adjoining wall here, the priests have put up an image of
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour – a more traditional Catholic icon.
And the two images rather neatly represent the tension that’s
developed at the church since Father Ted retired; whether they
also represent hope for some kind of mutual accommodation in the
future remains to be seen.

Father Gerry Prindiville is also opposed to the community holding
its twice-weekly sharing of the meal inside the church. This has
angered the parishioners who organise the meal – one of them being
Mary McMahon.

Mary McMahon: I know that the current priests don’t want
us to be here,
doing what we’re doing today...

David Rutledge: ...which is the sharing of the meal?

Mary McMahon: ...sharing of the meal, which we do two days
a week, on
Tuesdays and Fridays in the mornings. And we must have close to
a hundred people
each time – and you can see people sit around and talk, it’s not
just taking a
sandwich and going, or anything like that; it is a real sharing
of the community
spirit. And that is Ted’s legacy, really – and they are very keen
for us not to
be here, because they think that it’s not seemly.

David Rutledge: Have they made that plain?

Mary McMahon: They have actually said – well, one of them,
Father Gerry
Prindiville, has said that he doesn’t think it’s appropriate that
we are in the
church. Whereas we think that the living and wounded Christ is
here, in
ourselves and in the people, and that there should be no more
appropriate place
than Christ’s house for us to be.

Mario Bezzine: There’s all these volunteers; they have
family, they come
in their spare time; these people just work for the poor, not
for the church.

David Rutledge: That’s Mario Bezzine, who lives just up
the road from
Redfern in nearby Waterloo.

Mario Bezzine: Usually the churches, they’re all very rich,
you know? I’m
from Malta, you see, like they make the churches rich, you see
gold and that.
Say, like, somebody is sick, and you say 'if my daughter gets
well, I’ll give
you my gold ring' – that’s how they work sometimes.

But here, they want to leave it like that, because it represents
the poor. They
don’t want the church to look nice, they just want more help for
these people.
Because there’s a lot of people who are hungry – I mean, this
was their own
invention, these people who help here. I’m just a poor person
who helps a bit by
washing and that, but I think it’s disgusting when there’s so
much money in the
Church.

They don’t have a key – the people who work for the poor, they
don’t even have a
key for the church. You have to go and tell the priest to open
and close the
church for us – when we’re finished we have to go and tell them.
I think that’s
disgusting, when there’s people who have been here thirty years
helping here,
doing the same job. What do you think? I think that it’s very
hypocritical. The
Church is supposed to help the poor; these people are putting
their money where
their mouth is, but the hierarchy, they’re just sitting on their
fat butts –
excuse me – and doing nothing, like usual.

Mary McMahon: The carpet, which none of us likes, is here;
we’ve always
had bare boards. They’ve also put a dais there, which we also
find
inappropriate, as we don’t believe the priest should stand up
above the rest of
us. Some of the members of the community have removed a couple
of those daises,
and they’ve always been replaced. I think that one might be actually
nailed down
so that people can’t do it.

I suppose we’re seen as iconoclastic in a way, that we don’t want
the clericalism, which Ted was never in favour of. We don’t want
that sort of clericalism, I think it’s the cold hand of Rome,
really.

David Rutledge: It’s interesting you mention the bare boards.
And I guess
these bare boards are part of the vision, right? These boards
are theologically
significant in themselves?

Mary McMahon: Absolutely. Many Aboriginal people have died
in this
church, and their bodies have been on these boards. And they died
in many
different ways, but often in the loving arms of people who tried
to support them
in their last few hours or minutes. And to try and cover it up
with trashy
carpet – or any sort of carpet, even expensive carpet – is just
missing the
whole vision of what the Church should be doing with all the people,
you know?
So yes, the bare boards are really significant – and we would
like them to stay,
and not be covered up.

David Rutledge: Mary McMahon – and since that interview
was recorded, the Sydney Archdiocese’s Charitable Works Fund has
told the St Vincent’s community that it will be withdrawing its
funding for the twice-weekly sharing
of the meal at the church.

MUSIC

Parishioners at St Vincent’s Redfern are angry about what they
see as the clericalism that’s becoming a feature of life at the
church. But the problems have gone further than arguments over
church decoration. Relations between the priests and the Aboriginal
parishioners have deteriorated, and this became particularly apparent
during the riot in February this year. Rhonda Ansiewicz.

Rhonda Ansiewicz: The day after that young boy was killed,
which
precipitated the riots, Marnie Kennedy stood up after Mass and
said to Father
Gerry: 'what are you going to do to support the Aboriginal community,
who are in
a terrible state of crisis?'

David Rutledge: This is Ted Kennedy’s sister?

Rhonda Ansiewicz: Yes. And his response was 'it is a police
matter, and
that is where it will have to be dealt with'. There was no – where
Ted would
have been down at the Block; he would have been there to hold
people, he would
have stood with the Aboriginal people, to try and help them through
that
terrible trauma. There was none of that from Gerry; it’s as if
it’s a bit
frightening to go out onto that area.

Cindy French: Yeah, things have changed, people have changed,
the church
has changed – not itself, but the people that come in here. You
know, this is
our land, this church helped all of us out, and it’s helped everyone
that comes
here, seen practically nearly all of us born and reared up. It’s
just when the
new priests come, everyone’s going their own way, you know? And
you can ask 99%
of the Aboriginal people here – and white people – believe he
should be kicked
out.

David Rutledge: Cindy French.

It’s becoming apparent that both the congregation and the priests
at St Vincent’s are showing the strain. The community has a website
called Church
Mouse, where you can read about various distressing incidents
that have allegedly occurred during the Sunday Mass – incidents
that demonstrate a high degree of stress on both sides. Hilary
Bone.

Hilary Bone: The incident that I personally experienced
was going up to
take the Eucharist. And having had the instruction from the priest,
that you
will consume the Host in front of him, there was just this inherent
fear in me,
that he is a father figure, and there was something about his
personality that I
found very distressing. So that I literally stepped to one side
– I was sitting
in the front pew – to take the Eucharist. And he flew at me, and
was very
abusive. And there was some physical intervention by somebody
else in the
community. That was just a pretty awful incident.

The other one was when he refused to give the bread – the Host
– to some
Aboriginal children. And that was never the practice of Ted, to
discriminate on
any grounds.

David Rutledge: On what grounds did he refuse them?

Hilary Bone: I think at the time the grounds were that
he couldn’t be
certain that they had been baptised in the Church. And so another
parishioner
and I took our Host, and broke it, and gave it to the Aboriginal
girls. And that
also led to some vocal outburst from the priest.

But I can see that for them, the tensions are just as great as
they are for us –
but for very different reasons.

David Rutledge: Hilary Bone.

Father Gerry Prindiville is a member of the Neocatechumenal
Way, a radical and conservative formation within the Catholic
Church that many parishioners are pointing to as the root of the
current problems at St Vincent’s. Gerry Prindiville was appointed
to Redfern by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell –
and both he and Cardinal Pell have declined to be interviewed
for this program.

The Neocatechumenal Way (or Neocatechumenate) was founded in the
early 1960s in the slums of Madrid, by an artist named Kiko Arguello,
who together with a small group of companions set about restoring
the ancient catechumenate, or process of adult Christian initiation,
that had been developed by the early church to bring adult converts
to Christ. The Neocatechumenate today claims to number nearly
17,000 communities in 105 countries around the world.

The Neocatechumenate exists within the parish structure, so its
followers will organise themselves into a group of thirty or forty
people within an existing congregation – which is what’s happened
at Redfern. The focus of the group – put very simply – is to work
towards deepening and maturing in the faith. That process of faith
development proceeds by stages of instruction and initiation that
can continue over several years, during which time the group places
a high degree of importance on mutual support and loyalty.

The Neocatechumenal Way has attracted a fair degree of bad press
over the years. Its critics say that in its appeal to what it
sees as a historically authentic form of Christian practice, the
Neocatechumenate fosters elitism, a closed-shop mentality, indeed
a sectarian mentality, according to which the formal requirements
of the group take precedence over social or political concerns,
and private spirituality becomes more important than any kind
of activity in the public realm.

One such critic is Church historian and author Paul Collins, who
has just published a book entitled Between The Rock and a Hard
Place, in which he takes issue with various forms of Catholic
fundamentalism.

Paul Collins: A sectarian response is the response of a
group of people
who are afraid they’ve almost lost the battle, and the only way
they fell they
can respond is by tightening the borders, putting up protective
mechanisms
around themselves, so that they actually don’t have to interact
with the
also-rans and the great unwashed out there in the wider community.
It’s a little
bit like the kind of approach that we’ve taken in Australia generally,
in saying
“we are going to protect our borders”.

I think that that is an essential denial of what the Catholic
Church is about.
The Catholic Church, throughout its history, has been about dialogue
with the
community around it. It certainly has to offer a critique of modern
life and
modern values, but that does not mean that it turns itself away;
people will
hear your critique, and engage with your critique, if you engage
with them in a
form of dialogue. But they won’t hear it if you simply turn away
from them and
condemn them with some type of megaphone from within your own
fortress.

That’s the problem, I think, that outfits like the Neocats have:
they go on as
though the only way to deal with the contemporary world is to
insulate yourself
somehow or other from that world.

David Rutledge: Let’s have a look at the particular context
of St
Vincent’s Redfern. How well would Neocatechumenate theology prepare
one to
minister in a parish such as Redfern – a centre for social activism
with its own
very strong cultural identity?

Paul Collins: Well, I think that if you were looking for
the diametric
opposite of that community, as founded and formed by Father Ted
Kennedy, you
couldn’t have got it more accurate than to bring the Neocatechumenate
in. that,
to me, is a very irresponsible thing to do, to bring people like
that – it’s
unfair to them, to begin with.

They are also, in many ways, totally out of touch with the reality
of the
Aboriginal community – with the history of that community, what
has happened to
it, what it’s struggling with – and that’s why the white community
exists there:
in order to assist, and to stand beside, and to work with the
leaders of the
Aboriginal community. If you were looking for a group that were
out of touch
with that reality, you couldn’t have got a better group than the
Neocatechumenate.

David Rutledge: So why put a Neocatechumenate priest in
charge of a
church like St Vincent’s?

Paul Collins: Well, I think you would have to ask Cardinal
Pell that
question, not me, because he is the one who apparently is responsible
for
bringing them in. I suppose – and I can only guess – that his
intention was that
this was perhaps a community out of control. It’s at least plausible
that
Cardinal Pell believes that it is by confronting people whom he
sees as
dissident with people whom he sees as orthodox, that somehow or
other orthodoxy
will prevail. But I personally think that that is a pretty optimistic
hope on
his part.

David Rutledge: Paul Collins.

In spite of its questionable reputation in some quarters, the
Neocatechumenal Way doesn’t always spell disaster for the congregations
in which its followers appear.

Chris Saunders is the Catholic Bishop of Broome in Western Australia.
Several of his parishioners – and two of his priests – are members
of the Neocatechumenate. His experience of their work and their
ministry has been largely positive.

Chris Saunders: It’s certainly a radical movement – my
position has been
to look at it so far and say “well, is this the work of God?”
And by way of
response, I would say that it will not prosper if it is not the
work of God. And
everything I see about it – the way they love one another, the
way they support
one another, as a way of helping people to walk more deeply, in
a more committed
fashion towards Christ.

David Rutledge: In this process of mutual support, though,
do they in any
way create a congregation within the congregation? This is something
else that
you hear about the Neocatechumenate – I know for example that
they hold their
own Easter vigil, and they hold their own Masses on Saturday night.
Is that
something that you feel could cause problems?

Chris Saunders: I think that potential is there. I can
understand in some
circumstances, if you weren’t prepared continually to exercise
a critical
faculty, that that may arise. But that’s certainly not the case
here – and in
many other parishes where I’ve seen it working, it’s not the case
there either.

I’m – technically, at least – parish priest here in Broome. The
two priests that
I have here are both of the Neocatechumenate, and I’m prepared
to let this
community have its own Masses on the Saturday evening. And I must
add that a
number of those people – quite a large number of those who go
to their own
communal Mass on Saturday evening – also come to the celebration
of the
Eucharist again on Sunday morning. There’s not a lot of Catholics
who go to two
Masses a week.

David Rutledge: What about the question of cultural sensitivity?
This is
something that’s come up as well: this idea that in the Neocatechumenate
seminaries, candidates for the priesthood are brought together
from all over the
world, and it can be that they end up in parishes where they’re
completely
unprepared – and untrained – to meet the demands of inculturation.
You mentioned
to me earlier that the Neocatechumenate priests in your diocese,
one’s Zambian
and one’s Australian with an Italian background – and there they
are in Broome,
working closely alongside Aboriginal communities. How has that
been evolving?

Chris Saunders: In the parish at Broome, during their administration
here, they’ve been instrumental in beginning and supporting an
Aboriginal
Catholic ministry. They have recognised, publicly and openly,
that Aboriginal
people need to find a particular way to express the deeper tenets
of their faith
in an Aboriginal manner. I have had no Aboriginal people come
to me and say that
the ministry of the priests that I have here – or the presence
of the community
here – walks over our traditional sensibilities or our cultural
attributes. In
fact I’ve had just the opposite: that these priests and this community
have been
supportive of us in finding our way to express our Catholicity.

David Rutledge: If – as I guess you’re saying, then – the
criticisms that
we hear of the Neocatechumenal Way aren’t necessarily true of
the Way in any
fundamental sense, do you think it’s true nevertheless that if
you’re a
Christian and you have an inward focus, and you feel that protecting
your
identity as a Christian or as a Catholic from secularism means
that you have to
withdraw from the secular world – if you’re that kind of Christian,
then the
Neocatechumenate will be very attractive to you?

Chris Saunders: It may be – but I know that this community
here is not
only inward-looking in terms of supporting each other, but outward-looking
in
terms of evangelisation. Far from hiding from the world, they
live in the world.
I mean, this is largely lay movement, and the lay people in it
have jobs, they
have careers, they have families, they do all the sorts of things
that other
Australians do. They simply spend a lot more time living with
the word of God,
for instance.

David Rutledge: Given your positive experience with the
Neocatechumenate,
why do you think it has drawn these claims of sectarian tendencies,
and these
claims that whenever the Neocats turn up in a congregation, then
you get
division and claims of exclusion – because this is what you hear,
time and time
again. Why do you think that is?

Chris Saunders: Well, you do hear that, and I must say
that I have heard
that more regularly in the past than I have in the present. The
Tablet
from London – the Catholic newspaper – ran a series of articles
some years ago,
that were rather condemnatory of the movement. And I remember
being rather
sceptical about the whole organisation – until I met some of the
people here in
Australia who represented it.

I think what has happened is that you have a new movement, a new
way, a new
understanding of living the Catholic life, that is extremely radical.
There may
have been some birthing pains, and some terrible beginnings or
bad experiences –
but as this organisation matures, I see what depth and beauty
it can bring to
the enlivening of the Catholic faith. And I notice recently, also,
that theTablet is changing quite radically its views regarding
the Way.

David Rutledge: The Bishop of Broome, Chris Saunders.

STREET SOUNDS - REDFERN

Ted Kennedy: In many Australian towns, the Catholic Church
is securely
planted near the local police station, courthouse, town hall or
council
chambers. Drawing from one ecclesiology – still the increasingly
accepted one
here – it would be said that the centre of the local church is
there.

But go to the outskirts of the town: past the dilapidated houses
on the town
fringe, past the rubbish tip, and there you’ll find the Aboriginal
community.
Drawing from the opposite ecclesiology, I would want to say that
the centre of
the local church is there.

Such divergent theologies of the meaning of church stem from two
equally
divergent interpretations of the figure of Christ, and of the
nature of sin. The
first places little or no consequence on the social context in
which Christ
lived. The kind of God he is made out to be leaves him as one
with no real
choices in life. The figures of power in a Jewish elitist nation,
and a Roman
colonised state, are all accidental. They are like quaint drawings
on a
cardboard stage set, which is no longer needed now, and so discarded.
What is
then important is not when, or how, Christ came to be killed;
it is only the
fact – in churchy billboard language – that Christ died, and for
us all. Private
morality is the only morality that counts. Human oppression cannot
easily be
brought into focus as a question of morality, let alone kept in
permanent view.

So your civic activities are confined to the politics of morality,
rather than
the morality of politics as such. It was this – the morality of
politics – that
Christ was concerned about.

In the radically revised theology of the meaning of Christ, social
sin comes up
clearly as the first reading of sin. It was social sin, not private
sin, that
brought death to Christ. The sin of injustice is the primal sin,
that which
constitutes the very meaning of sin – the sin of the world. It
is that from
which any other form of sin is but a derivative. So that racism,
and national
and social elitism in all their forms, emerge as primary targets
in all
Christian living, as they were for Christ.

Any so-called Christian spirituality that does not come to grips
with this from
the start is guilty of privatising, pedanticising, and thereby
trivialising the
Gospel – religious, but spiritually hollow.

MUSIC - HYMN

David Rutledge: Father Ted Kennedy, ABC Radio’s Saturday
Guest back in 1984.

Ted Kennedy has had a lot of very confronting things to say about
latent racism in the Australian Catholic Church, particularly
in its more conservative formations, where the claims of political
and social groups are sometimes seen as just another manifestation
of secular modernity – the dread spectre of identity politics,
wherein claims for Aboriginal rights sit alongside claims for
women’s rights and gay rights.

But to what extent is latent racism the problem at St Vincent’s
Redfern? Paul Collins.

Paul Collins: I would be more cautious about attributing
that to
conservative Catholics. I think that they are pretty much onside
with the
mainstream social justice aims of the Catholic Church. It is significant
that
one of the things John Paul has been very firm about throughout
his papacy has
been his support for indigenous people – minority indigenous people
– in Western
cultures like Australia or Canada or the United States.

Given that conservative Catholics do tend to have their antennae
up very closely
with what the Pope is saying, and with the kind of emphases that
he has, I
suspect that they would not be necessarily anti-Aboriginal.

What I really think the issue is here – more than a question of
social justice,
I think the question here is: who controls that building there
in Redfern? Who
controls what goes on inside that building? That’s there the essence
of the
problem lies, and what I think more conservative people feel is
that that is a
parish that is out of control. And what they feel they have to
do is bring it
back under control.

The danger is, of course, that in doing that, they will in fact
destroy the
wonderful social justice ministry that has been set up there,
and will in fact
alienate the Aboriginal community.

Hilary Bone: That is the thing that is unique about this
parish. They’re
ordinary human beings, but there is a large number – in fact,
the majority of
the people – who come to that church, they open their homes, and
they live
alongside Aboriginal people in various ways. They may not be physically
present
with them, but many of them do open their homes. These are the
things that
happen that other people are totally unaware of.

David Rutledge: But Hilary, how threatened do you think
that situation
could be, given that the parish is under such immense pressure
now – has been
since Ted retired? Quite a number of the white parishioners I’ve
spoken to have
said that they’ve walked away from the situation, they don’t go
to the church
any more, they fought these fights after Vatican II and they don’t
really want
to go through it all again.

Hilary Bone: Well, the tragedy is that this community –
and I’m not just
talking about the group of people who are there now, which has
diminished to
some extent; I’m talking about historically the thousands and
thousands of
people who still are part of Redfern, in that they’re living out
their lives
with that theology inspired by the theology that they received
there – the
sadness is not that people appear not to be physically going in
there on a
Saturday or Sunday; the tragedy is that this is a community that
I would be
surprised if it’s mirrored anywhere else in Australia.

And the Church is going to lose something of intrinsic value –
and it will
never, ever get it back. There won’t be somebody to come forward
again and be
able to – by example only – create a community of people who have
this
incredibly wide influence. It’s not just them, but the wider influence
of their
lives; they’re interacting and inspiring an incredible number
of people. So it’s
much, much bigger than the physical church.

David Rutledge: Hilary Bone.

Nobody at St Vincent’s will deny that Ted Kennedy, in his retirement,
has left a very large pair of shoes to fill. So is it the case
that any priest coming to Redfern after Father Ted is going to
be trying to live up to unreasonable expectations?

Hilary Bone: There are other priests out there who want
to – and have
offered to – come and minister to that community. And they have
been denied that
opportunity, they have expressed their interest to do that. But
we don’t need
Ted Kennedys. All we need now is a priest who understands our
history and is
prepared to just be there with us, so that other people can experience
what
we’ve experienced. But certainly the legacy of Ted will live for
many, many,
many, many years, and it doesn’t matter who we have there – as
long as it’s not
someone who is bent on destroying what is there in existence already.

The community has explored every single option, and been incredibly
tolerant,
and incredibly willing, to do everything within their power (and
their power, of
course, is very limited) to make this work, somehow or other,
so that the poor
unfortunate Neocats – because that’s what they are, having been
placed there,
they must be feeling the same sort of frustration, even agony,
that this
community is. And again, it’s simply saying to the Church, well,
we have
explained what’s happening, and we have done everything within
our power. But
our power is very, very limited, compared with the power of the
person who has
created this really unfortunate situation.

Joe Castley: I think any number of priests of sufficient
flexibility of
mind and good will could have been accepted there. I really don’t
think it’s a
question that after Ted, nobody could possibly hope to succeed.
People brought
their lives to Redfern to be blessed; they didn’t come to be told
how to live
their lives.

David Rutledge: So if we have a situation, then, where
the ministry that
Ted Kennedy instituted is continuing in and through the congregation,
why not
simply move away from the church? Why not simply say “alright,
the
Neocatechumenate – Archbishop Pell can have the church, we’ll
go off and do what
we want to do somewhere else – in Redfern, maybe, but we’ll leave
the church”?

Joe Castley: Personally, I’ve done that. And others have
gone, too, to
different places. But the sense of community is still very precious
there.
There’s still that mutual support, I suppose, is what keeps them
there – and the
sense that there’s still, for them, something better, richer,
freer, there than
they can find in the parishes.

Rhonda Ansiewicz: I would say: why should we move on? This
is something
very precious and unique in the Catholic Church of the world,
and it is worth
struggling for. And the Gospel story is about struggle.

Those among us who have said to you “we’ve done the battle with
Vatican II and
we can’t hang around on this one”, they’re actually saying “we’ve
done the
battle of the church, and we can’t see any light in it any more”.
I believe that
it is up to us to maintain the true Catholic values – Christian
values – that
Jesus taught us: that we are there to stand against oppression
and the abuse of
power that is very much the Catholic Church of today.

We have a mandate, in a sense, to stand up for the poor, because
the Church
certainly doesn’t appear to be doing that very much now.

Hilary Bone: The physical place of Redfern, also, is a
place where many
Aboriginal people – in fact, hundreds of Aboriginal people over
those
thirty/thirty five years – have been baptised, have been married,
have been
buried, and the deaths go on and on and on. And it’s a sacred
place, it is a
place to be revered –and it’s being defiled.

David Rutledge: Hilary Bone, and before her Rhonda Ansiewicz.

And so how is the situation at St Vincent’s likely to play out
in the longer term? Paul Collins thinks that compromise on both
sides is going to be necessary.

Paul Collins: It’s very, very difficult to see what the
future is in this
situation. Just the weekend that I was there, it was reported
that Cardinal Pell
has said that he is not prepared to back down, and that he is
not prepared to
move the Neocatechumenate from Redfern. The danger is, I think,
that if the
community digs itself too deeply into a hole of resistance and
antagonism and
anger – somehow or other, a form of dialogue has got to be maintained.

If it isn’t, and if the community is destroyed, in my view a very
wicked thing
will have been done. But I am unfortunately a Church historian
by training, and
I’ve seen wicked things done in the Church before, and I’m sure
that they will
happen in the Church of the future. So I think it’s a very, very
difficult
situation, in which both sides are probably going to have to give
something. But
I remain to be convinced whether that is going to happen.

Michael Gravener: I would like to think that we could work
together. But
that might be very naïve, because we are miles apart, even though
we are of the
same Church.

David Rutledge: That’s Michael Gravener, a St John of God
Brother and a social worker at the Block in Redfern.

Michael Gravener: I’ve had conversations with one of the
priests at
Redfern now, who’s in one sentence called me an atheist, called
me
non-Christian, told me that the work we do is just secular work
– very negative,
attacking sort of connotations. So I don’t believe that they actually
think the
St Vincent’s community actually has a place.

There’s a bit of a myth about St Vincent’s being the largest indigenous
church.
If you go there on Sunday, the amount of Aboriginal people actually
there is
quite minimal. But that place is so symbolic, and has such memories
for people,
that just the people in the area who live there know that that
is their space.
They mightn’t pray there, they mightn’t worship a Christian god
there, but for
them it’s the safe place that they need. I mean, we all have safe
places in our
lives, and a lot of Aboriginal people, particularly in Redfern,
who suffer years
and years of trauma and abuse from all different areas and aspects
of life, they
know that this is their safe space. I hear it all the time, on
the streets.

I suppose it’s a bit of a hard concept for Western church thinking,
but from an
Aboriginal point of view – as we all know – space and place is
very important.

David Rutledge: So how likely do you think it is that they
could lose the
church?

Michael Gravener: Well, it’s quite likely, really. The
world of Western
capitalism and land and all that – the Church hierarchy in Sydney
has absolute
power over that, I suppose.

But I suppose we all dream of the possibilities of restorative
rights – as the
Sisters of Mercy gave the land next door, back in the 70s, to
Aboriginal people...

David Rutledge: ...this is the Medical Centre?

Michael Gravener: ...the Medical Centre that’s now gone
up on land that
was once the Mercy Sisters’. The Mercies obviously saw it as an
act of
reconciliation in handing that land back to the people of Redfern,
and they did.
And it’s taken twenty years to get a decent medical centre. So
that’s a
wonderful thing, and I live in hope that the Church will see that
the reality of
that Medical Centre being there, the reality of what’s happened
in the last
thirty years – that somehow, in good Christian spirit, something
wonderful will
happen and change.

That might sound naïve, but I’m a great believer in my Church.
And if it was
Jesus Christ hanging around, he’d be the one who’d be saying “well
come on,
let’s hand it back to them, let’s do the right thing by these
people”.

MUSIC

David Rutledge: On ABC Radio National you’ve been listening
to Encounter.

Thanks to all those who took part, and thanks also to those who
didn’t appear in the program but put a lot of time and energy
into helping it take shape: Bob Audrey, Elisabeth Burke, Jack
Callaghan, Kate Gavern, Beth Goodwin, Peter Griffin, Judy Hunt,
Marnie Kennedy, Claire Maguire, David Pascoe and Florence Spurling.
And thanks to Mark Don this week for studio production.